Travel writing in a Precarious Century – a walk to Bardsey

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Event details

Meet the authors who are writing about walking and the landscapes through which we walk, at walk · listen · create’s Walking Writers Salons. We are delighted to have author El Rhodes join us in May, talking about “All Among the Saints” a story about a pilgrimage walk to Bardsey (north Wales), one of a dozen new pieces in a new anthology of travel writing turning a Welsh gaze on the rest of the world.

‘It’s one of the pleasures of travel to submit yourself to other people, let yourself be guided and taught’.‘

Eluned Gramich.

Reading El’s memoire she reveals the monotony of the pilgrim’s physical journey that probably resonates with many:

“The days have their own litany – wake up, eat, walk, shop, walk some more, eat, sleep, repeat. There is little to distinguish between them except for the capricious seasonal oscillation between brittle sunshine and slanting rain and the distinctive pilgrim ink-stamps I sometimes remember to collect in the back of my guidebook. My notebook becomes more grounded in the moment; there is just the here, the now, and the next damp-drying step in front. I get along fast and ask my notebook if I am more suited to the peace and pace of the solitary walker than the gossipy plod of the pilgrim.”

El Rhodes is well known to the Walk listen Create community as a runner-up in our 2021 writing competition for her poem “Dolce et decorum est pro patria mori” as well as a long lister in this year’s competition. El leads a monthly nature writing workshop for Walk Listen Create. This year she also had work longlisted for the Nan Shepherd Prize.

An Open Door: New Travel Writing in a Precarious Century is edited by Steven Lovatt, the author of Birdsong in a Time of Silence (Particular Books, 2021) is published by Parthian Books in late May. Our modern anxieties over identity are registered here in writing that questions in a personal, visceral way the meaning of belonging and homecoming, and reflects a search for stability and solace as much as a desire for adventure. 

You can listen to a recent podcast interview with Steven Lovatt, the editor of ‘An Open Door’ from here.

Walking Writers Salons are hour-long events in which you will get to meet a Walking Writer and learn from them how they weave writing and walking, and how they interpret their surroundings. Each Salon will include a discussion with the author, inviting questions from the audience, and will include a multiple choice quiz in which winners will receive prizes including print copies of WALKING (RRP €4.50) and WALKING HOME (RRP €4.99) our own limited edition illustrated chapbook anthologies of poems and prose.

Parthian Books are offering two complimentary copies of “An Open Door” as prizes in our multiple choice quiz.